Summoned to the Wilds (Villains & Virtues, #2)

by A.K. Caggiano

Not that there was a parable in which Eva had been faced with the decision to hitch her cart to a blood mage who intended to slaughter the king, free his demon father from prison, and call up infernal vengeance on the entire realm, but if there were, Amma was sure Eva wouldn’t have chosen to help the man who had just unleashed an undead army on her hometown. Then again, if Eva had seen how that blood mage looked when doing it—and for her nonetheless—she might have actually surrendered all her virtue on the spot. Amma surely would have if they hadn’t been interrupted.

“Because it’s inside Amma.” Xander froze, blood hesitating at the mouth of the vial, and then he recorked it. “You put an enthrallment talisman inside our sweet, little kitten? Nice.” “No, it’s not nice at all.” And she’s not ours, she’s mine.

The baby’s whining began to escalate. “I said, I didn’t mean to,” he hissed directly to it as if that might convince it to stop. The baby began to properly squall. “Amma, do something.” She held her hands out. “Like what?” “Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you know?” Amma’s hands fell back to her sides, and all the anxiety went out of her voice. “Why would I know, Damien?” He glanced back to the chamber through the door’s crack, still empty, but for how long with the spawn’s cries rising? “Because you’re, you know, kind and…and nurturing? Also you happen to have breasts.” Amma glared at him and poked herself in the chest. “These aren’t working, they’re just for show!”

That was what Damien had meant—it was that Amma was a soothing presence. The breasts were just a nice perk.

With black hair falling messily around his temples, deeply violet eyes, that long scar across his face from forehead to cheek, and the last vestiges of shadows smoking off of his hand, she supposed he looked at least a bit like a villain, but it wasn’t the first thing she saw when she looked at him. It wasn’t even the second or third to be perfectly honest.

And anyway, how could someone so utterly handsome be evil?

“Amma?” Her eyes popped back open. “Yes?” “The thing I said, about killing you if I find you too irritating?” Damien cleared his throat. “That was a…a joke.” She clicked her tongue. “I know. That’s why I laughed.” “I just would like to confirm that you completely understand.” There was patience levied in his voice along with a strain as he struggled for the words. “Feel free to be, you know, as irritating as you like without fear of imminent death.” Kaz retched from the shadows. Amma giggled lightly. “Yes, Damien, I do understand. Thank you,” she said, and this time she meant it.

There was nothing to be afraid of, she realized, not here and not anywhere. Not when they were together.

CHAPTER 16 IN WHICH EXPECTATIONS ARE HOPEFULLY MET

This chapter has to be the best one yet of the two books. And gods above do I love the restraint and yet devotion of this man.

“Amma, the only thing that is clear is that I prefer your company, even when you are infuriating, to an entire cave full of vampires. I’d like nothing more than to be with you, but not when you’ve had to coerce yourself into it by way of magic. I do want you, but not like this.”

“I would just gladly be swallowed by endless darkness upon endless darkness if it meant not hurting you because I have never cared so deeply for another being. I cannot explain or understand how you have broken me in this way, but you have made me feel…things that are maddening.”

He chuckled as he made his way over to where she was heaping praise on both horses in a sugary, sincere voice because of course she was, she knew no other way to speak to dumb creatures, which was appropriate as dumb creatures seemed to like it quite a bit. He certainly did.

It had only been seven days they’d spent apart, but each night she’d thought of him, imagined hearing his breath beside her as he fell asleep, recalling those violet eyes, that knowing grin, the painful-looking scar she had come to adore. His face had burned itself into her mind, and now that it was before her again, she knew something had changed.

If he hadn’t come back, she would be free of him, of the villain who had her arcanely chained to his side, so how had it come to this? To getting absolutely everything she needed—the Brineberth soldiers run out of her home, her pending wedding struck from possibility, seeds from a wild liathau to repopulate the orchard—and feeling as though none of it mattered if she didn’t have what she wanted. If she didn’t have him.

“I don’t want anyone getting killed because of me,” she said, words laced with the same delicacy of her fingers on his sleeve. “No one else, not over a misunderstanding.” Fuck, why did she have to go and say a thing like that? As if she knew exactly what he meant to do and the power her words held over those actions. “But…” He sighed. I really want to was, perhaps, not the most stalwart thing to say at that moment even though it was exactly what ran through his mind.

Amma picked up the central, glass box, parchment wrapped just about its middle, the label written in Ouranic, of all things, but then below that, a translation in Key: For healing the unmendable wounds of surly blood mages.

When she touched the linen to his cut, he pulled back with a gasp. “Oh, stop it.” “But you’re hurting me,” he whined, and she almost laughed as she grabbed his arm, only distracted for a moment with how hard his bicep was.

Amma went back to stand just in front of him and cupped her hands under his chin. As she tilted his head up, a gentle curiosity took his features and they softened. “You’ll be all right, Damien. I’ll take care of you. I promise.” He swallowed hard. “You will?” Amma looked down at him, and for the first time, Damien seemed small. Her mind filled with the sapling in the greenhouse and the acorn on the road and the seeds from the wild liathau. Most things started out that way, tiny but with a whole world of potential inside, and they really only got big with at least a little help. “Of course, I will.”

Damien swallowed back a lump in his throat, shaking his head. For all Amma had been to him and all she had done for him, it was the thing she hadn’t that suddenly struck him so deeply. Damien had been privately glad to not have the talisman readily available—it meant he could not follow his father’s orders just yet—but more than that, unburdening Amma of the talisman so that she could make choices based solely on what she wanted also meant dissolving what tied the two of them together. What had at first been a hateful and cumbersome chain had grown into a tether he desperately held onto, an anchor he relied on in an arcanely dark sea so easy to become lost in, and as selfish and terrible as that was, the thought of severing it pierced him deeper than any blade ever had.

Even here in the ridiculousness of the Everdarque with ruin looming so close by, it felt like a fucking joke how right it was to hold her and be held. And he knew then, unequivocally, that losing all of it—losing her—was going to be even more painful than never having Amma to begin with.

he ran a hand through his black hair to push it back but only mussed it up further, like a raven’s wing in a storm.

She’d wanted to tell Damien the night before that she kept the talisman inside her not to stop him from doing something awful with it, but to stop him from leaving her to go do it. But it was shameful, that she cared more about keeping him around than about the whole, stupid realm.

He wanted to believe that she would because she was kind and sweet and forgiving, but it was unjust and stupid to think Amma had no limit to her patience, and he was a bloody, fucking idiot, he had broken the vow he’d made to her, and somehow convinced her that he didn’t even have the capacity to care. But he did care, and he did feel, blood mage or not, all of those impractical, human emotions that had been pounding on his chest and he had finally let in. And it was awful.

A mma had, for most of her life, always found it easy to push away that which was uncomfortable and frankly unacceptable to feel. Those sorts of emotional outbursts were to be hidden in favor of amicable acceptance and an even temperament.

Feelings, being inherently frustrating and messy, are also often vindictive. It is one of their worst traits, which is really something that shouldn’t be thought on for too long—feelings having feelings—but just quietly accepted as the truth of things. After being denied and bottled up and misconstrued, feelings too have a limit, and if they find they cannot be expressed in their natural, honest states, they will resort to putting on the cloaks of other feelings, adopting new accents and a little makeup, and when they are finally convincing enough, roar out into the world disguised as something completely different.

I’m sure there are some things in this world worse than I am. Damien had been wrong then—it was not some things, it was all of them.

Would it be enough? Enough to…gods, what did she expect, exactly? For Damien to rush into the heart of danger, to a keep full of soldiers under the sword of a man he’d stolen from? To come to her rescue yet again at great peril to himself and everything he’d worked for? He would surely be sick of how abductable she was by now—she was certainly sick of it.

And then he realized it was Cedric, run through and dripping the very last of his own blood into a massive pool on the floor. Damien grinned slowly, only disappointed that he hadn’t been able to send the bastard to the Abyss himself.

instead arms were slung around his neck, pulling him down to her, and lips were pressed to his own. She tasted of copper and salt, she was panting like a rabbit caught in a trap, and she was clawing at his neck so harshly she had to be drawing blood, but she was kissing him. Amma was in his arms, she was safe, she was kissing him, and he was complete.

D espite being in the most dangerous place she could imagine, Amma knew she was safe. Damien’s arms were around her, his warm body pressed to hers, and his lips were kissing her back, tender and soft like she knew he could be—like she knew he truly was. “You came for me,” she whispered up against his mouth. His fingertips grazed her temple, smoothing away hair that had fallen in her face, and he pressed another kiss to her lips. “You called. How could I not?” “I thought…” The words fell away as she stared into a face streaked with blood, exhaustion pooling in the hollows of his eyes. “You thought what?” He rested his forehead on hers, a husk to his voice as a crooked smile grew over his mouth. “That I wouldn’t? That I could possibly bare to lose you? That I am not utterly and unconditionally—”